Touchwiz has stopped working and phone freezing

[Meshmesh37]

Hello,

Today all of a sudden my phone (Samsung galaxy S4) started lagging and then Touchwiz started crashing, forcing me to extract the battery to restart it.

I have read really a lot of topics around to see how people managed to solve and so far what I saw was that people in the past started having this problem after an Android update, which I didn't to, so I don't think it might be related to it.

Solutions which worked for other people/Itried :

Turning off motion settings

Clearing Data/Cache for touchwiz

Clearing their cache partition

I really don't know how to solve and this is driving me crazy, moreover I really would like to avoid a factory reset, does anyone know how I could solve?

Thank you in advance

 

[centenarians]

I am having exactly the same problem, just started today too. Anyone have any ideas?

 

[centenarians]

in case anyone is still having this problem, I've downloaded nova launcher and it seems to have resolved. There must be some kind of incompatibility with touhwiz causing the constant freezing.

 

[rei-gouki]

Has also been happening to me for the past day or 2 - running 4.3 and didn't do any update to the OS as per OP. It was little things at first then consistent, albeit randomly, hanging with occasional moments when it does something you tapped several minutes ago. Forced restart either by holding the power button down or taking out the battery can get it to work somewhat normally for a little while before it freezes again.

So far, tried:
- Clearing cache via recovery mode
- Clearing Touchwiz Home and Easy Home data while in Safe Mode

Both haven't done anything for me except reset my folders in Apps screen and reset the home screens, and seems to have messed up my ability to switch keyboards via the screen accessed through the notification drop-down.

One solution that's been suggested I haven't tried is a factory reset via Recovery Mode. Not quite prepared to commit to that amount of work to bring the phone back to scratch, just yet :-\

Would love to know if there's a solution that isn't baby-out-with-the-bath-water, especially if the problem isn't going to be fixed by it and will just come back once I set everything back up again. The "use a different launcher" work-around, I've heard of, and did use when TouchWiz screwed up on the S2 so it should

Oh, there's been suggestions that it's likely due to an app or process that started interacting with Touchwiz and freezing the phone. On that train of thought, I grabbed a listing of "Recently updated" apps off Google Play for comparison. I'm not certain how long Play keeps apps that were updated on the list, however, so the potentially offending app/process may not be on it anymore.

- Australia Post
- Facebook
- Google Keyboard
- Google+
- IF by IFTTT
- Instagram
- LinkedIn
- Maps
- Messenger (the Facebook one)
- Ozsale
- Samsung Print Service Plugin
- Samsung Wallet
- Security & Antivirus | Lookout
- SMS Backup& Restore
- TripAdvisor Hotels Restaurants
- WeChat
- Yahoo Mail